3 days of down, but one big day of up, up, up.

OK, RICE sucks, much worse than CHOP.

One down, three to go

Well all in all, the first treatment in the hospital with RICE wasn’t too bad. I felt a little woozy when they first set up the IVs, and the low grade naseau is back, but not too bad. One of the medications takes a full 24 hours to go in, and you have to go to the bathroom a lot due to the fluid intake and also since leaving it in your bladder can cause bleeding. My urine smells funny and has to be flushed twice to get rid of remenants since it’s toxic.

Got the best news so far though that the tumor on my right neck is almost gone. The doctor isn’t sure there’s anything left except for biopsy scar tissue. Well tomorrow it’s back to work.

My family has been great, I’ve talked to my Mom every day. My mother in law has been filling in as babysitter, cook, and house cleaner gratefully so my wife can spend time with me. And Kassie came up the hospital Wednesday, and she was a bit worried about all the hoses. Then we played on my bed going up and down and raising and lowering and she got over an uneasiness.

5 months or so and this should all be behind us. Need to plan a big Disneyland celebration actually.

Only a few more treatments to go

This is going to be pretty short, becuase I forgot about the chemo side effects. I went into the ‘infusion center’ today and got shot up with:

• Some prednisone (solamide?) like steriod
• Saline
• BP 16 (the E in RICE)
• rituxin

On top of that I took a few pills, two tylenol and two benadrils. I had forgotten how much fun it all is. For the first five minutes I felt a little woozy as the saline got pumped in to my new little portocath. Then I pulled it together and worked on my two computers and read some technical books and a graphic novel. Only issue turned up about 2:00 when I got an itchy red scalp and they had to stop the rituxin and give me some more solamide to calm down the allergic reaction. So now I’m allergic to rituxin and compazine.

Anyway I’m tired, food tastes a little funny, and the low grade naseau is back already. But I got to kiss my daughters goodnite so things are still pretty good.

Well, Tuesday we went out to Stanford and got a second opinion from a world renowned hematologist. Essentially his reccomendations were:

• Get a bone marrow biopsy before starting chemo
• Use RICE over RCHOP, 4 cycles
• Do the bone marrow transplant now rather than later

Actually he explained that it was a stem cell transplant really, so they never actually harvest anything from the bone marrow. Anyway the Stanford oncologist who is much more of an academic still hasn’t gotten ahold of my oncologist in Sacramento, but here’s the regimen I’m looking at starting next week:

• Tuesday the 12th — all day outpatient getting rituxin
• Wed – Friday — in the hospital getting the rest of ICE

That’s all I know at this point since they’re still trying to finalize things. I won’t get a bone marrow biopsy before, but it really doesn’t make any logical difference since they’ll still have to do the chemo. This does mean I’m missing a lot of work starting very soon.

At least the waiting is pretty much over. And hey, hospitals may be more fun than I think

Lots of fun

Yesterday was a pretty great day. I got up and had brunch with Jon and Dopey who went on a banzai trip all the way from Vegas to spend the day. Joe, Ghen, Scum, Ben, and Tom showed up a little later. We hung out for the day doing mostly geeky things like playing BurnRate (the dotcom card game) and UNO Attack, which Kassie won, amazingly. We had dinner with the big group at Thai Basil in the back with the water and the open air. Of course everybody had to go home after downing some Chunky Monkey.